“I am a words person, that is why typography is the obvious extension, it just makes my words visible.” Erik Spiekermann

As a designer, I have a special place tucked away in my heart for fonts. However, I find working with system fonts tragically disappointing. I am faced with this disappointment every day when creating accessible interactive spaces. Spaces that need to be compatible with every operating system and web browser. This is the dilemma, how do you create engaging spaces that are accessible to everyone when there are so many limitations?

Using system fonts creates many limitations. Typography can be such a powerful story teller. It tells about a period in time and can portray different personality. System fonts tell a story it is just wrong one.

They can reflect a period in time that says I am just out dated enough for you to notice. For example Arial looks like it was designed in 1982 primarily because of its high x height that was popular in the 80’s.

Very few of the system fonts have a distinct personality and the ones that do are obnoxious. For example, Comic Sans. Although Comic Sans was only created in 1994 it has done a great amount of damage in a short amount of time. It is every where. It has become the most widely used system font. Right now I am still looking for reasons why this type face has been made so accessible. The choice is yours you can either make a stand against the spread of comic sans or you can add to the problem.

Courier New was commissioned in the 1950’s by IBM originally designed for typewriters. At this point in time courier is not good for large bodies of text because it is not legible but is often used as a display and programming font. Until 2004 Courier New was the U.S. State Department’s standard typeface, now they are using Times New Roman. Because of its history it has been used as a display font for Mission: Impossible-Opening. But when it comes down to it these fonts are obnoxious and are absolutely useless to me.

When it comes to system fonts I have very little to work with. At this point These are the fonts that I have to work with Arial, Arial Black, Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Comic Sans MS, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel, Courier New, Georgia, Geneva, Helvetica, Impact, Lucida Console, Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, Monaco, Palatino Linotype / Book Antiqua, Palatino, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Times, Trebuchet MS, and Verdana are all of the system fonts being used by the different operating systems. Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, and Corbel have just been introduced and are only available to Windows Vista and are intended to replace all other system fonts used by other operating systems. Microsoft and Macintosh are both trying to solve the problem independently only creating a greater problem.

This is what I need at the most basic level, a sans serif and serif font designed to be functional, timeless, easy to read and accessible to every platform functional. Please anyone step up to the plate give me something to work with.